


Jagged

by Byrcca



Series: Equinox [4]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angry Sex, Betrayal, Episode: s06e01 Equinox, F/M, Song Lyrics, Song fic (not really but maybe?), lots of f-bombs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 02:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16461323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byrcca/pseuds/Byrcca
Summary: It feels so (not) good, swimming in my belly. Max Burke: the echo, boom, and burst, raining down on Tom and B’Elanna.





	Jagged

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Belonging](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14012979) by [Byrcca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byrcca/pseuds/Byrcca). 



> Thanks to Helen8462 for the quick look-see, and to LA, as always, my loudest cheerleader. 
> 
> With apologies to Alanis Morissette...

Harry had commed him, having heard it from Meg, who had heard it from Jenny, who had got the head’s up from Tal Celes. Tom had no idea who had told her. The deckplates weren’t rattling, precisely, the bulkheads not vibrating, but he could hear it, albeit faintly, all the way down the corridor. By the time he reached her door, he could almost make out the lyrics. He didn’t need to hear them, he knew which song was playing from the base beat. This wasn’t unexpected, but he wasn’t wholly prepared to face it, either. 

Tom paused in front of her door, humming along, the words to the song playing out in his head.

_And all I really want is some comfort_  
_A way to get my hands untied_  
_And all I really want is some justice_

Likely, that was exactly what she wanted. He decided, and pressed her door chime. Either she didn’t hear over the cacophony inside, or she was ignoring him, so he pressed it again. Nothing. 

_It's all I really want, some patience_  
_A way to calm me down_

This time he balled his hand into a fist and pounded. The door opened and he was assaulted by the noise. It felt almost like a physical blow: the bass vibrating in his belly, thrumming in his throat. 

_And all I really want is deliverance_  
_A place to find a common ground_

He braced his shoulders and stepped inside.

_And all I really want is some justice_

“Computer, mute playback!” 

That was better. He could hear himself think now. 

The silence was actually deafening. Tom’s ears rang. He’d expected her quarters to be torn up: dishes tossed and broken, couch cushions thrown on the floor, lamps and furniture overturned. They weren’t. Her rooms were neat and tidy—unusual but not unheard of—and he decided she’d attempted to expunge her anger through cleaning. It hadn’t worked, obviously.

“What?” she asked. She was curled in the corner of her couch, her legs drawn up, arm around her knees, staring fixedly at the far wall. That was familiar.

“Hi.” He took a couple of steps toward her, didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. “I’m from management. We’ve had a complaint about the noise…” He tried a small smile.

She was unmoved. “Funny.”

Tom sighed. He sat, not waiting for an invitation, and touched her hand. “Are you okay?”

“I’m—” She glanced at him, huffed and turned away. “No.”

“B’Elanna it’s—”

She cut him off. “I’m so angry! And there’s nothing I can do about it. I hate feeling like this.”

“I know.” He softened his tone, slipped her fisted hand into his and held it in his palm. 

She clenched her hand, and her fingernails scraped his skin. “Sometimes I just want to scream, but what’s the point?” A little laugh.

“If he were still alive, he’d be in the brig and you could scream at him all you wanted.”

She shook her head. “It’s not him I’m angry with.” Tom peered at her and raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I am, obviously. But I’m mostly angry at myself.”

He frowned. How could she imagine any of this was her fault?

She brought her legs down and turned toward him. Tom kept a hand on her knee, and she traced his knuckles with a fingertip. “I thought I was past all of that: the Academy, my disappointment, my anger. Max. It was another lifetime ago, two lifetimes ago; I thought I was over it.”

“But seeing him again brought it all back.”

“Yes.”

Tom’s jaw clenched; he struggled to keep his tone light. “You don’t have to tell me, B’Elanna. God knows you’ve never asked me about… But if he did something, if he hurt you—”

“No.” Her head came up and she stared into his eyes. “No, it wasn’t like that. He was… we were young, and he was attentive at first, sweet.” 

Tom shifted, not really wanting to hear about B’Elanna’s first great romance, about the guy who’d come before him. 

She didn’t notice his discomfort. “But you know how tough the first year is, how hard it is to adjust to the classes and the discipline. All the assignments they pile on, trying to, well, to weed out the people who…” 

He nodded. The cadets who couldn’t cut it. 

“We got swamped. I had labs and track training and I got behind on my reading, and he was jealous, wanted me to spend more time with him. Toward the end, he accused me of seeing someone else.”

If Tom had been feeling generous he would remember himself at eighteen, unsure, inexperienced, stupid. Would remember the final days of his first love affair, before Susie Crabtree dumped his ass because he’d been too clingy, too demanding, _too smothering_.

“As if I had time to cheat on him!” Her voice rose in indignation.

Tom felt his face flush with chagrin. 

“Once, I came back to my dorm room after studying in the library and caught him at my desk going through my personal padds, trying to log into my messages. I was so stunned, I couldn’t even be angry at him.”

“What?” Tom envisioned her pounding the shit out of him, spitting on his near-corpse and throwing him out of her room, preferably via a third floor window. “What did you do?”

“I allowed him to talk me around. I accepted that he missed me, was afraid I didn’t want him anymore because I’d been _ignoring him_. Ignoring him by doing my coursework!” She shook her head. “I let him convince me that it was my fault.”

Anger, hot and pure, shot through Tom. That piece of shit! He drew a breath, trying to calm down. He got the feeling that if he really told her what he thought of the prick, she’d start to defend him, if only to justify her own decade-old choices. He tried another tack. “B’Elanna, we’ve all put up with stuff that we knew we shouldn’t, doubted our instincts. Most of us have done things that we knew at the time weren’t right, but we did them anyway. What he did to you, he manipulated you. That’s something he should be ashamed of, not you.”

“It wasn’t even that.” She pulled her hand out of his and stood, paced toward her bedroom, turned back toward him. “I caught him on a command console in engineering the other day, and I… I let him sidetrack me. I let him talk his way out of it.”

Tom frowned. “Maybe he was just—”

“He said he was just studying _Voyager’s_ propulsion system, since they were going to be stuck here. He lied to me, Tom. There was a record: he downloaded the specs for the multiphasic field generator so they’d know how to operate it once they stole it. They were already planning to run and leave us vulnerable to those nucleogenic lifeforms.”

“You didn’t know that. You trusted him.” He followed her as she paced to the other end of her quarters. 

“I didn’t trust him,” she shook her head. Her voice was small, and she huffed a little laugh. “Not really. I…”

“What?” His hand closed over the firm muscle of her upper arm and tugged her around to face him. He was getting tired of talking to the back of her head. 

“He flattered me! He pretended he was still, you know, interested in me, and I liked it. I liked the idea that he regretted letting me go. That he’s, I don’t know, thought about me all these years.”

Tom’s jaw tensed, his shoulders stiffened. “I see,” he said.

“No, you really don’t.” She looked away from him. “He didn’t care that I…that we might be killed.”

He slid his hand down her arm, cupped her elbow but she didn’t respond. Didn’t step closer to him. Didn’t slide her arms around his middle and accept his comfort. Her posture was stiff, her shoulders hunched. Not for the first time Tom wondered what might have happened if they had stayed, if Ransom and his crew had accepted _Voyager’s_ offer of shelter and been grateful. If he’d had to live with not just the ghost of B’Elanna’s first boyfriend walking the halls of the ship, but the man himself. 

He felt a little bead of fear in the pit of his stomach, sitting like a stone: if Burke had been a better man, if he hadn’t betrayed her trust this second time, would B’Elanna have gone back to him? The thought of Max sweating and gasping on top of her, his mouth on hers, his hands in her hair, enraged him. He wanted to erase Burke’s palm prints from her skin, his scent from her nostrils, and remind her that she was _his_. Which made him as bad as Burke, but Christ, something about her made him possessive. 

He reached for her shoulders just as she turned her head toward him, and his hands hung in the air for a moment before she reached up and clasped them. His gaze roamed over her hair, her forehead, down her cheek to her full, red lips. Jerked back up to her eyes. He steeled himself. “Do you still love him?”

She look at him, baffled, dark eyes round, mouth hanging open. “No!” She shook her head. “I’m not sure I ever did. I liked the _idea_ of a boyfriend more than, well…” She shrugged, but he could see the anger and hurt in her eyes. “ _You live, you learn_ , right?” 

Relief washed over him, making his cheeks hot, his palms damp. “ _That’s what happens when you get your heart trampled_. I’ve been there.” He stared at her, and she finally pulled him into a hug. Her body was stiff, vibrating with tension. He ran his palm down her spine trying to comfort her. 

“ _I don’t want to swallow it anymore_ ,” she murmured into his shoulder. 

“You _want to cry? Scream?_ He pulled back, warmth bubbling inside him as she played along with their game of _Insert 20th Century Song Lyrics Here_. He flashed her a little smile. 

She stared at him intently. “I want you to fuck me.” 

Tom startled. It wasn’t that he’d never heard her use the word before, he had and in that context, but never so dispassionately, like she was issuing crew assignments. She would breathe the words into his skin, her voice rough, lips warm and moist, hot breath in his ear, on his throat. He would turn her, push her down against any flat surface: the table, the back of the sofa, flat on her belly on the mattress, her ass hanging off the edge of the bed, his hands gripping her hips as he pounded into her from behind. Always from behind, by her command, for leverage, so he had more power behind his thrusts. She was, after all, an engineer. 

But to state it like this, so flatly, so boldly, without even a hint of passion or even affection, brought his anger roaring back. He should walk out. He should force her to talk some more, he should be honest with her about his own feelings about _Max_ , that piece of shit! Max, the fucker. _The fuck her_. Fucked her. Something black, and petty, and possessive flared inside him. Jealousy.

Fucking did not involve kissing, as a rule. Fucking was hard, fast, a little rough, but still loving and a hell of a lot of fun. But there was nothing tender about it, nothing sweet and, sometimes, it was exactly what they both wanted, what they both needed. Sweetness came after. There was lips on skin, sucking, panting breath, sometimes teeth grazing, biting, but never kissing. 

Until now. 

He jerked her toward him, one hand wound in her hair, pulling, the other around her back, fingers biting into her ribs, as he slammed his mouth onto hers. She fell against him, off balance, her hands fisted on his chest. He kissed her until she squirmed, until she fought for breath and shoved him away. She panted, her breath rasping, and he realized he was doing the same. 

Her eyes narrowed, her lips quirked. That was all the warning he had before she reached for his uniform jacket and jerked it open and down his arms, pulled his turtleneck up and off, her fingernails scoring his sides, his chin catching in the neck of the shirt before popping free. She grabbed his undershirt by the collar and tore it from neck to navel, and smiled in satisfaction at the gaping fabric.

Tom took a step toward her, another, stripped her jacket from her, pushed on her shoulders, forced her to back up until her shoulder blades hit the bulkhead. He shoved her shirt up under her chin, just high enough for access to her breasts. When she reached for the hem, he grabbed her wrists, pinned them to the wall next to her ears. “No,” he said before he lowered his head and sucked a nipple between his teeth, salved the hard bud with his tongue. She convulsed, her body jerking against his, her knees buckling, and he shoved his thigh between her legs, against her groin, holding her up.

“Yes.” She ground against him. 

He kissed her again, forcing his tongue between her lips, and she opened for him, welcoming his small invasion. He pinned her to wall with his chest, his legs, and fiddled with the zip on his pants, shoved them over his hips, down his legs, kicked off his boots, his skin sliding along hers as he bent down to pull his feet free. Her hands had landed on his shoulders, and her nails dug into the muscles of his upper arms, making him twitch. 

He grabbed her hands and jerked her toward him, traded places and spun her so they were standing, his back to the wall, hers to his chest as she faced the room. He tugged at her shirt, and she helped him, pulling it over her head and dropping it to the floor. He kissed her shoulders, the back of her neck, sucked on her skin, leaving red marks that would be hidden by her hair. She was fumbling with her uniform slacks, pushing them over her hips, and he yanked them down to her ankles. She bent her knee, made to step out of them, and he grabbed her thigh, pushed it back down. “No,” he said. It wasn’t a request. He wanted her hobbled. He wanted her off-balance.

“Tom…” Her voice was a quiet growl.

He snaked an arm around her belly and jerked her back against his groin, ground his erection against her ass. “You’re mine,” he breathed, remembering Max, and felt her shudder. He licked the vertebrae at the base of her neck, rubbed his jaw with its evening stubble against the tender skin of her throat and cheek, nipped her earlobe. 

This time her voice was high, gasping. “Tom!” She quivered. 

He gripped her belly with his right hand, shoved between her shoulder blades with his left, bending her at the waist, and spread her legs, bent slightly and pushed into her slick heat. She hummed, whined, raised up and pushed against him, arching her back like a bow. He’d had to bend his knees, wrap his longer body around her, and she was up to on her toes, her hands clenching his wrist, his elbow, seeking something to hold onto. He pulled her upright, and she staggered, groped at his arm. He paused, regained his balance, breathed, then thrust into her. 

“Yes,” she said again, pushing into his groin. 

Tom pounded into her attempting to expunge Burke from her memory. He had one arm around her, his hand grasping her hip, anchoring her to him, the other tight against her chest. His fingers dug into her collarbone, his thumb close to the tender hollow of her throat, index finger straying near the pulse point on her neck. Her heart was beating wildly, as was his, and he breathed raggedly into her shoulder. His mouth was open, his teeth pressing into her tender skin. He was aware that he was holding her tight enough to bruise her; he didn’t care. He hoped he would. 

“Say you’re mine,” he demanded, still pounding into her, a punishing pace.

She whimpered, her legs shaking with the strain of staying upright, and she gasped a ‘yes’. It wasn’t enough. 

“Say it, pleas—” he wasn’t above begging. 

“I’m yours!” Her fingers tightened on his wrist, her nails pricking his skin. “I’m yours, Tom.”

He bucked into her, feeling the rush start to build, energy dancing on his skin and pulling inward. “Only mine!” A small, distant part of his brain knew he was being an asshole; he didn’t care. 

“Only yours,” she agreed. “I love you, love …”

Her words triggered his orgasm and pleasure barrelled over him, swamping him like a tsunami, and he convulsed with the joy of it. His teeth sank into her shoulder, breaking the skin, and he tasted salt as her hot blood spilled onto his tongue. She bucked, pitching forward, quivering, her hands spasming on his arms, fingernails biting into flesh, and he almost dropped her. He closed his arms around her, pinning her body to his, pulling her backward, and he slumped against the wall, panting into her hair. She shook, twitched against him.

Gradually his breathing slowed and his heart rate approached normal. She turned in his arms, her sweat-slicked body sliding against his, and burrowed into his chest. He settled one hand on her lower back, smoothed her hair with the other. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She was quiet a moment, then pulled back and looked into his eyes. “No. I am.”

He couldn’t look at her. His hand dropped from her hair, fingers trailed along her shoulder, over the bite he’d given her. She closed her eyes and pressed into him. He wanted to ask her if _he’d_ ever made her come like that, ever broken her flesh, ever left bruises on her skin. He was almost certain he hadn’t. Max. The fucker. 

She shivered, chilled in her nakedness, and shuffled away from him. He remembered, and bent to help her free her legs from her slacks. She balanced with her fingertips resting on his shoulder. He pulled off her socks, cupping her feet, sliding his palms against ankle, heel, sole, then lowered her foot to the floor. He straightened. She brushed her fingers down his arm, over his hand. “Are you coming to bed?”

He hadn’t thought she’d want him to stay.

He wound his fingers with hers and followed her into her bedroom. They slid between the covers naked, and Tom knew the _sweetness_ would come now—B’Elanna got chilled when she slept nude, and curled against him leaching his warmth. He was happy to share it with her. Predictably, as soon as he’d settled comfortably, she scooted closer, tucked her nose into his shoulder, slid a small, warm hand across his chest. He reached up and wrapped his own around it.”

“I like that I don’t have to pretend with you,” she said. “I can just be myself.”

“I like your self.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “ _Don’t be alarmed if I’ve fallen_ ,” Tom said, his voice quiet. 

“ _Head over feet_?” 

She smiled up at him but his expression sobred. “ _I love you for all that you are_ , B’Elanna.”

“ _Surprise!_ ” She grinned.

“I mean it. I don’t love some image of you, who I think you are or who I want you to be, I love _you_.”

“Well, _you couldn’t help it_.”

He nodded. “ _It’s all your fault_. Think anyone called Harry with a noise complaint?” 

She laughed and moved on top of him, straddled his hips and rubbed her slick centre along the length of his growing erection. “ _Are you afraid of flying_ , Tom?”

“That would be _ironic_.” He slid his palms up her ribs, cupped her breasts, pressed his thumb into her nipple and watched it harden into a tight bead, felt her shiver again. He leaned up and kissed her throat, brushed his lips over the bite he’d given her. It was red, and looked sore. He didn’t apologize, though he was sorry. 

“ _Do I wear you out_ , Tom?”

“Yeah, in all the good ways.”

“ _Well, how appropriate_.” She smiled and kissed him. “ _You’re so much braver than I give you credit for_.”

“ _That’s not lip service_?” His eyes sparkled as he supplied the lyric. God, he loved this woman!

“No, this is.” She kissed his chin, followed the line of his jaw to his throat.

“ _Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you_.” He kissed her cheek, slid a hand around her hip to her firm, round ass. Squeezed.

She angled her hips, slid along his length. “ _When you think everything's okay and everything's going right_?” 

He nodded, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “ _Everything blows up in your face?_ ”

“On both of us. I’m sorry. Thank you for coming here, for facing me.”

“It’s okay.” He was sorry, too. Sorry for doubting her, for the suspicion that had nagged him from the moment he’d learned about their old relationship, her and Burke. Sorry for not trusting her. “Any time. If you want to talk to me, just ask.”

“Thanks for coming even when I don’t.” 

He grinned, his eyes sparkling. “I hope you come every time I do.” He waggled his eyebrows and she _whooped_ a laugh and thumped him lightly on the chest. “Ow,” he said.

She leaned down and kissed him, kissed him again with more heat, and he shoved his fingers into her hair and opened his mouth to her questing tongue. Burke was dead. Tom hoped he’d stay buried. 

~~~~~

**Author's Note:**

> I threw a couple of head canons in here, both based on Tom’s hobbies, one his idea (which I hope is obvious) and one, hers. The game, based on Harry quizzing B’Elanna on old movies in the turbolift scene in...Year of Hell? All Tom’s invention, I’m sure. And B’Elanna playing Jagged Little Pill REALLY LOUD when she’s pissed off and feeling impotent. 
> 
>  
> 
> Songwriters: Glen Ballard / Alanis Nadine Morissette
> 
>  
> 
> Ironic lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, The Bicycle Music Company  
> Head Over Feet lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, The Bicycle Music Company  
> You Learn lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, The Bicycle Music Company


End file.
